Burke versus Gramsci – the Great British Institution and the Conservative Dilemma

 Conservatives look to Edmund Burke as their great founding father.  Central to Burkean thought is the institution with its historical memory as a repository of the wisdom of the ancestors.  In terms of modern philosophy and the Burkean tradition one might also look to Alasdair MacIntyre in his account of institutions and nations acquiring a tradition of virtue and as a Burkean opponent of Burke’s dreaded sophists, economists and calculators .

If conservatism depends for its philosophy upon manmade institutions there is always the risk such institutions will prove fatally fallible and corruptible.  Such could well be the problem in today’s United Kingdom.  Unlike the United States with its revolutionary origins, there has not been such a strong suspicion of Government and institutions within the British Right, sometimes quite the opposite.  The Crown and the Church as Margaret Thatcher once outlined are of far greater import to a Tory than the economy.  This perspective, it should be remembered, was held by the Conservative Prime Minister now looked to as an exemplar by today’s sophists, calculators and economists – the libertarian and neoliberal Right.

Margaret Thatcher though experienced the problem of the dilemma I intend to outline at first-hand.  All the British institutions, the Church of England, the BBC and even the hierarchy of the Conservative Party were opposed to her.  This tension has only grown more stretched and extreme.  While the Conservative Party has moved culturally to the Left, it is still faced by a hostile hard Left in control of the institutions that it should naturally be at home with.

The Church of England is no longer the Conservative Party at prayer, as the saying had it.  The BBC is faced with calls to be defenestrated by conservatives not radicals, because of its cultural Marxism.  Even the Conservative Party itself, at least its high command, is now a proponent of the hard-left cultural agenda in terms of same-sex marriage, “diversity” and equality of outcome.

It seems as though the Gramsci agenda of the “long march through the institutions” as extreme Leftist German-activist Rudi Dutschke put it, has been emphatically achieved in Great Britain.  The universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, the BBC, the Church are all advocates of a hard-line cultural Marxist agenda dressed up in palatable phrases such as “diversity”, “equality”, “openness”.

So what does a Burkean conservative do when the institutions its whole philosophy seeks to conserve and be guided by have fallen into the hands of the Marxists?  One answer is the populist response, looking to the American Right as an example.  Here characters like Nigel Farage and Aaron Banks are notable champions for such an agenda.  Indeed, despite being placed upon the Right, their populist agenda sometimes puts them on the Left.  For example, whereas an earlier Eurosceptic like Enoch Powell was a keen defender of the House of Lords, as well as the Crown and the established Church, Farage and Banks are radical constitutional-reformers.

The other response is the classically liberal agenda, advocated by the sophists, calculators and economists that conservatives should instinctively distrust.  From this free-marketeer liberal perspective privatisation rather than conservation is the answer to the BBC’s political subversion.  The free market is not really a conservative response to dealing with preservation of the institution.  We are not talking about a nationalised industry, but a British institution which is a custodian of many great British traditions.  Would commercialisation and advertising culture really be a conservative answer?

One might contrast arch-liberal free-marketeer George Osborne with populist Nigel Farage as two contrasting answers to the Gramscian victory within British institutions from Oxbridge to the BBC.  To abolish our institutions though is surely not a conservative solution, whether it be BBC privatisation or Church disestablishment. 

The populism of Brexit might have unleashed patriotic forces against the Gramsci institutions, but populist nationalism is not inherently conservative, as any cursory knowledge of Nineteenth Century nationalism will tell us.

It is undoubtedly the case that while the Right and conservatism look to be in the ascendancy, the whole movement is riven by internal contradictions.  This new populism rightly unleashed against the EU has now turned on British institutions like the House of Lords (admittedly corrupted into a culturally Marxist institution by the likes of Blair, Cameron and Clegg).  It could just as easily turn upon the Monarchy and nationalism again would have reverted to its radical-Leftist Nineteenth-Century roots.

It has to be admitted that when the Marxists own and control what you are trying to defend it is difficult to know how to proceed.  The only answer I believe is not one for people looking for instant solutions.  Only a gradual return to the values of Tradition will rescue our institutions and our culture.  And this might have to be carried out in a radical and unconventional way, outside of the apparatus of British institutions.  It might mean home schooling of our children, to teach them traditional values outside of the Marxist-run education system.  It might mean leaving the Church of England as a Church of Laodicea for a more traditionalist denomination that might feel foreign at first, such as Eastern Orthodoxy.  It might mean stepping back from the rat-race of the neoliberal economy with more self-sufficiency and less consumption.  In short it might mean letting the light of conservative tradition shine before men as an example, rather than trying to fight for it and impose it through democratic elections and the party system.  From the small acorn and with Providential nurture we might see a large oak of conservative counter-culture grow that provides a genuine alternative to the anomie of cultural Marxism and its insipid shadow, neoliberalism.  Only with a cultural change, rather than election victories will conservatives see their institutions restored and again linked back to the Burkean wisdom of ancestors. 

Ring-fence Defence of the Realm

Of all areas of Government spending, defence is the one area that suffered during the years of Labour mismanagement.  Despite fighting two wars at once, in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Government continued on a peacetime budget, stretched our armed forces to breaking point and failed to honour the military covenant.  This disastrous approach led to the defeat in Basra and the British public’s dramatic change in its view of foreign intervention – whereas once most of the public saw Britain as a force for good when it intervened militarily abroad, after Blair’s foreign adventures, the public no longer seems to believe that we will intervene for the right reasons or make things better when we do intervene.

Whether this failure by the Exchequer to fund our forces in the frontline had anything to do with the Chancellor’s hostility to a prime minister so keen on exercising the Royal Prerogative to send our troops abroad and as a means of spiting his political rival cannot be proved.  In all other areas of public expenditure Gordon Brown was profligate in his spending of taxpayers’ money and government debt.

With the election of the Coalition Government we have seen drastic defence cuts as part of an overall policy of reducing the large deficit incurred by Labour.  Sadly, as defence saw serious under-funding during the Labour years this means that in effect the defence budget is being hit harder than other budgets, particularly the NHS, which saw lavish spending under Labour.

Of course with our aging population there is a strong case that the NHS should be exempt from spending cuts.  On the other hand, with recent scandals in the NHS it is also clear that spending large amounts of money on the health service does not necessarily ensure a better service for the patient.  Of course, it does expand the number of people working in the public sector, who thereby need government expenditure to remain high to keep them in work.

There is something slightly difficult in trying to justify why departments that did very well out of Labour should receive special treatment when defence is in real terms being hardest hit.  While defence expenditure is not a means of creating or protecting employment, it is very troubling to see those who have risked their lives for us being made redundant.  With regard to the impact of cuts on dockyards such as Portsmouth, while it cannot be argued that money should simply be spent to keep the workforce in work, it can be argued that it is not in the national interest to lose skills that may be necessary in the future.

Meanwhile, the undoubtedly politically-courageous policy of ring-fencing international aid has been zealously adhered to.  It is a courageous policy because it would clearly be very unpopular in a recession to spend taxpayers’ money on poverty abroad rather than at home.

Of course the British public are rightly generous when emergencies such as the recent disaster in the Philippines occur.  Indeed it is right that in such an exigent situation Government money is spent as a means of relieving the suffering of our fellow humans.  That is not the sort of international aid that the British public distrust.  They rather distrust regular payments of their tax money to countries with expanding economies and corrupt governments.  One would have to move in very rarefied circles indeed to believe that such a policy would be popular.

Ring-fencing international aid was therefore no election gimmick.  It is rather a clear foreign policy, which aims to influence by so-called soft power and to head off problems such as anti-Western terrorism by paying money to countries that dislike us.

The British public has less reservation about defence expenditure and the reason is perhaps that
defence of the realm is the first duty of the State.  It is a public good, which cannot be provided by private companies for profit.  It works as a result of an altruistic concept of patriotism. 

It is unlike other public services in that it is not about delivering a service to each of us as individuals, but all of us as a nation.  It cannot therefore benefit from an internal market, whereas other public services can often learn from some aspects of the market.

Defence expenditure is paying for an insurance policy against unforeseen threats.  While the Government no doubt identified important new threats through its strategic defence review, when threats become manifest they have often been unforeseen.  Would we have necessarily forecast the invasion of the Falklands as a threat, when we were more worried about a nuclear Soviet Union?  Would we have foreseen the threat of Islamism?  Judging by the State’s tolerance of Islamic extremists who fomented discontent, hatred and sedition in the 1990s, probably not.

So while it is regrettable to see such a drastic reduction in our professional armed forces (with the Army shrinking by 20,000 men) and a planned reliance on the amateur (in the best sense of the word) element of the TA, it is also worrying.  With Ship-building ceasing at Portsmouth, no aircraft carriers until 2030 and the cutting back of regiments such as the Royal Fusiliers, Britain seems to have embarked on a change in its historic role that has even worried the United States.  This could be as serious a turning point as our withdrawal from the East of the Suez Canal.

The Defence Secretary, Philip Hammond, is an honourable politician.  For example, unlike many politicians, he took a principled stand on the issue of same-sex marriage.  One of his greatest skills is his business acumen.  It is important that he remembers though, that the Armed Forces do not operate like a business, but according to older values.  Cost-cutting is necessary across departments, but defence is the department that should be cut least.  Changing Britain’s world role must be about our national interest and values, not just the bottom line.  

     

A Guide to the Reform of the House of Lords (originally published on Respublica's Disraeli Room on 16th January 2012)

The composition of the upper house of Parliament has been under question for some time and yet still the question has not been answered.  There have been piecemeal reforms, such as the passing of the two Parliament Acts, the introduction of Life Peers and the removal of the vast majority of hereditary peers, but still the questions are asked.  The Coalition Government has now published a draft House of Lords Reform Bill.

Current Composition

The vast majority of peers are now life peers.  The total number of members of the House of Lords is 788 active members.  This number is divided into 26 Lords Spiritual (Bishops of the Church of England) and the remaining 762 are Lords Temporal.  Of the Lords Temporal there are 92 hereditary peers who have inherited their seats to the Lords and the remainder are life peers, whose seats are removed at their death.

There has been a dramatic increase in the number of life peers under the current Coalition Government.  Since May 2010 there have been 117 peerages created.

There is a mechanism for replacing hereditaries when they pass away.  A by-election is held among the hereditaries (both those sitting and those who have lost their automatic right to sit voting).  The winner replaces his deceased colleague.

History

The House of Lords is the upper house of Parliament and originally was only composed of Lords Spiritual (the bishops) and the Lords Temporal (senior aristocrats).  It emerged in a recognisable form during the Fourteenth Century.  Historically it was more powerful than the Commons, whose members represented the interests of the shires and boroughs.

Under the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell, along with the Monarchy the House of Lords was abolished.  With the Restoration of Monarchy and Lords a more gradual evolution took place, which saw the diminishing of the power of the Lords and the growth in the power of the Commons.

In the early Twentieth Century the Commons cemented its supremacy with the passing of the 1911 Parliament Act.  This legislation was in response to the landed interest represented in the Lords resisting the Liberal Government’s Budget, which included a heavy tax on the landed interest.  Under the threat of the Lords being flooded with new Liberal peers, the Lords gave way and accepted the Parliament Act.

Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949

Money bills to become law automatically if not passed by the Lords within one month.

Other bills can be forced through the Lords if rejected three times (provided two years had passed since the Second reading).

This time was to be shortened to two sessions by the Parliament Act 1949.

Further reforms have also affected the Lords.  Life peers were created by the Life Peerages Act 1958.  The House of Lords Act 1999 took away the right of most hereditaries to sit in the house, with only 92 allowed to remain until an obscure second stage of reform took place.

The Law Lords lost their place in the Lords and the Lord Chancellor his role as speaker of the House as a result of the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.  As a result the House of Lords is no longer the highest court in the land.  Many of these changes were criticised for having no overall purpose and unpicking the constitutional settlement.

Role of the Lords

The role of the Lords, like that of many British institutions, has evolved rather than been planned.  It has not had its role determined by experts sitting down and working out what it should be; rather it has filled the necessary gaps and provided the function of a revising chamber filled with experts, senior politicians and spiritual and legal leaders.

It sees its purpose as enabling the Commons to think again.  It has no right to override the supremacy of the Commons, but it generally achieves its purpose of considering issues away from the heat of partisan debate with more independence of thought and expertise.  The question therefore left begging is why change it?

Current Proposals

To an extent the argument for reform is that the need has arisen almost by accident.  A system that worked well has been unpicked almost in a fit of absence of mind as New Labour tinkered with the constitution to suit its short-term political needs.

Therefore the scenario presents itself as to what should this second stage of reform be?  The Government itself in its draft bill has left many options open.

It is proposed to have either an 80% elected or a 100% elected Upper Chamber.  Peers would be elected for fifteen year terms and be unable to stand again.  If the 80% option is chosen twelve of the current 26 Lords Spiritual would remain.  With the 100% option they would all be lost.

The case for reform is that Great Britain’s bicameral system is unusual in that it is unelected.  It is also argued that an elected Lords would have more legitimacy and therefore be better able to hold the Commons to account.

The dangers of reform are that the House becomes more partisan, loses its expert and spiritual elements, is made up of politicians who could not make it into the Commons and that it challenges the supremacy of the Commons (the flipside of the argument for an elected chamber).

When embarking upon constitutional reform it is vital that debate is considered and informed.  As the Commons makes up its mind on the 80% or 100% option it must ask the question: What is the purpose of the Lords?  We do not have a written constitution and rather like the Monarchy, the role of the Lords has evolved.  Therefore MPs must look at the current situation to see what the Lords actually does and then ask themselves will current reforms enhance that role or diminish it.  In essence, through evolution, the Lords has become a revising expert chamber, with a strong spiritual and legal input.  Will 80% or 100% elected peers further this equilibrium or hinder it?

- See more at: http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/A-Guide-to-the-Reform-of-the-House-of-Lords

The New Cabinet: Coalition Constraints and Compromises (originally published on Respublica's Disraeli Room on 7 September 2012)

Reshuffles may be about the Prime Minister setting the direction, but when policy has to be agreed by two parties the aims of government become all the more opaque. A natural consequence of coalition is that while a prime minister may wish to set the direction of government through his appointments, he will always be constrained by the wishes of the minority partner. The Liberal Democrats have 50% representation in the so-called “Quad” (where Cameron, Osborne, Clegg and Alexander agree a common direction for the Government to take). It is therefore unclear to commentator and voter what direction the government will take.

Macmillan commented that the British do not like coalition government. That is because our adversarial politics is based upon giving the voters a clear choice and being able to assess a party on its record in government. Unless a voter pays inordinate attention to the machinations of coalition politics he will either simply judge both parties according to the compromised policies they agree on or will be unclear as to what the two parties stand for. It is no accident that political parties that prefer coalition government also favour other constitutional arrangements such as proportional voting that make government opaque and strengthen the political class.

Without the compromises of coalition, the Prime Minister could fully exercise the Royal Prerogative to set the direction of the Government.  It is unfashionable to defend the use of the Prerogative, but it does mean the Prime Minister sets the agenda by his appointments and therefore voters know what they are getting and can vote accordingly. It gives a clear choice to voters and that must be democratic.

Coalition government reduces the clarity of the choice voters can make and increases suspicion of the political class as they are perceived to compromise on manifesto commitments and reach deals to keep them both in government.  This coalition came together because of the lack of a clear election result and the dire state of the economy. People did not vote for a coalition of course, they rather voted for different parties. The economy was a strong reason to enter coalition and it is by its record on the economy the coalition will be judged.

The apparent lack of growth is perhaps a reason for retaining Ken Clarke in the Cabinet, without portfolio.  Clarke of course oversaw a period of economic growth while addressing the government deficit. This was following a period of supply-side reforms that freed up the private sector, allowing it to grow.

The criticism of the Chancellor is unfair. His policy on the deficit has ensured that Britain has retained its Triple A status; this when other major Western nations are losing theirs. The deficit-reduction plan is vital for setting the foundations for growth. It ensures a low interest rate because the bond markets retain their confidence in Britain’s ability to pay its debts and it means that private sector investment is not crowded out by public debt.

Rightly though, there is concern that growth is not faster. Conservatives generally believe that rather than the Keynesian approach of stimulating demand and relying on major government projects to achieve the multiplier effect, supply-side reforms are what enable the private sector to grow. This is why the Beecroft Report was commissioned, which came forward with radical proposals to foster private-sector growth.

Ironically it was the Secretary of State with responsibility for business, Vince Cable, who prevented these reforms being delivered. As much as Mr Cameron wants to refocus his Government on economic growth, because of the politics of coalition he cannot move Mr Cable, who is ideologically opposed to many of the supply-side measures needed for business.    

The power to reshuffle has allowed Mr Cameron to move two economically savvy Conservatives, Matthew Hancock and Michael Fallon (who has experience of business in the real world), to the Business Department.  Because of coalition constraints however, he can only manoeuvre and not set a new direction to the Business Department.

This is not just a problem with one individual minister. It is a problem with coalition government and its limits on the Prime Minister’s power to appoint his own ministers thereby setting the direction. The Conservatives at the next election will be judged on their economic record. MPs such as David Davis have been calling for supply-side reforms, but the Conservatives will be judged on the record of coalition, not their own beliefs. The danger is that because the Liberal Democrats hold a veto over economic policy, growth will be restricted. Meanwhile, because of this policy logjam, the Conservatives are looking for other options, such as relaxing planning laws.  This could well risk alienating their voters in the Shires. 

Unless someone is especially politically interested and follows the manoeuvres of coalition government, the average voter will simply judge both parties on their record. This means that the choice is not as clear as it should be. It would be far more democratic to allow a party to deliver on its programme and then to be held to account for it, rather than to be hemmed in by a party with far less democratic support and then be punished at the polls for not delivering on the growth that many Conservatives believe could be achieved were the junior coalition partners to allow them more of a free-hand on this key area of policy.

Of course the Conservatives did not achieve an outright majority, but this coalition came together to solve the economic difficulties of the country. The Prime Minister is unable to demote Liberal Democrat Ministers and unless they prove less obstructive on supply-side reform, delivery of economic growth will be very difficult and coalition government as an approach will be perceived by the public as not having worked. If coalition does not allow the Prime Minister a freer hand on reshuffles, then the onus is on those ministers he cannot reshuffle to be more on board with achieving economic growth.  

• See Also:

- See more at: http://www.respublica.org.uk/item/The-New-Cabinet-Constraints-of-the-Coalition-